You know how people often earn their nicknames from the first unique thing that people notice about them? Let me tell you a little story about a delivery driver at a restaurant I used to work at.
Late one afternoon, the phone rang, and I picked it up. It was a guy I knew who was the manager’s friend, and he was calling in to place a delivery order. I took his order, and said I’d have it right out to him. The driver took the food once it was prepared and headed off.
About 20 minutes later, the driver storms inside screaming about “this cheap guy!”.
I looked at the credit card receipt, and noticed that the customer only tipped him $0.02 – on an order of over $40! As it would turn out, this was just a joke we were playing on the driver, and he got his tip when the friend came in a few days later. Nothing cheap about him at all.
But from that point on, he was known to anybody who was relatively new to the restaurant as being “the cheap guy”… just from this one little stunt.
What drew us to this nickname? Obviously, it was the two cent tip that made him a cheap guy. He’s actually a chartered accountant, and lives in a pretty expensive apartment. But as we all know, first impressions are everything.
If a $0.02 tip will make you look like a cheap guy, then will a cheap domain name make you look like a cheap company?
Now, I’m not trying to play elitist here and alienate the enterprising tech geniuses who haven’t got the resources to buy a million dollar domain name. I’m sympathetic to the startup life. Credit cards. Ramen noodles. Pabst Blue Ribbon. Starbucks meetings. Every dollar matters – as it should, since you’re out to get rich; not make somebody else rich.
But kind of like toilet paper and condoms, there are certain things in life you just don’t cheap out on.
The common defining characteristic I’ve found to be true of such things is that the only possible upside of cheaping out is a slight savings, and the possible downsides include (but are not limited to) pain and potentially greater expense than the moderately costlier alternative.
Choosing a cheap domain name absolutely can have these consequences; but more on that in a second.
What makes a good domain name so important is that it’s the face of your business, to the online world. It’s on your business cards, in your email addresses, and is your response when posed the question of “do you have a website?”
Just as having a nice sign at the front of your store is important, or getting a professionally designed logo on your business cards is important, having an attractive URL benefits your business in so many ways. Better memorability, sounds better when said verbally, better email addresses – but most importantly, it just looks good.
When you cheap out, not only do you forgo these benefits, you run the risk of earning negative credibility by having been seen as choosing the “most inexpensive way out” – as might be the case with a .info domain name, a hyphenated domain name, or a free subdomain (e.g. example.weebly.com, example.webs.com). This is especially the case when it’s clear that you have money.
What do I mean by this?
If you’re putting up flyers at your local espresso joint, printed in black and white, I’m a little more sympathetic to a domain name such as my-cool-startup.info. But if you’re running a $2,500 magazine ad, and sponsoring the local startup conference, with a domain name that requires more than one oral clarification, I start to wonder about your priorities.
Our friend, the cheap guy, earned his nickname because he had the nerve to leave an 0.05% tip for the delivery driver. That looks bad on him, because he had $40 to spend on delivery, but not $5 to spend on a tip.
Similarly, if you have thousands of dollars to spend on your business, but just pocket change to spend on your domain name, all it says about you is that you’re treating your domain name – and inherently, your brand image, as an afterthought.
Not having to repeat or spell out your web address may seem like a small detail, but that small detail is how people identify, and think of your business. You won’t know what effect cheaping out had until it’s too late.
Going right back to the toilet paper and the condoms, it’s exactly the same thing.
It may seem like a small detail, and a great opportunity to save a buck. But in all three cases – toilet paper, condoms, and domain names – you won’t notice the consequence of cheaping out until the damage is visible, irreversible… or both!
